Executive Secretary of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Anthony Ojukwu has suggested that security agents continue to torture suspects in spite of existing anti-torture legislation.
He lamented that more than 80 percent of criminal cases prosecuted by the police rely on confessional statements, saying such could have been obtained through torture.
Ojukwu spoke while decrying the anomalies in Nigeria’s criminal justice system.
According to him, the position of the law was not clear on the consequences of torture until 2017.
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The 8th National Assembly passed the Anti-Torture Act 2017 which was assented to by President Mohammadu Buhari on December 29, 2017.
“Even though somebody is a criminal, they are presumed innocent until proven guilty. But at times, the investigation process is more brutal in the sense that probably you are going to be tortured to confess.
“So, you go to court, more than 80% of the cases brought to court are confessional statements. Now it may be or may not be true but any evidence obtained through torture is not valid evidence and the law was not very clear on the consequences of torture.
“The only thing it said was that if it gets to court and there is an allegation of torture for evidence when confessional statement was taken, that there will be a trial within a trial to find out if there was torture and if there was torture, the evidence is not accepted.
“But the torturer goes back and continues torturing the next accused person. But there is an anti-torture legislation now in place since 2017 and, under that Act, if you torture and it is established you obtained evidence through torture, you will be tried for a criminal offence.
“But, to the best of my knowledge, I don’t think anybody has been convicted based on that because it is also police that is going to charge their own people for torture. So, it is a vicious cycle,” Ojukwu told Vanguard.